Page "fiction" Paragraph 754

Three Union guards appeared, carrying their rifles at ready.

Watson stared at them curiously.

They were stocky men, well fed and clean-shaven, with neat uniforms and sturdy boots.

Behind them shambled a long column of weak, tattered men.

The thin gray figures raised a hoarse, cawing cry like the call of a bird flock.

They moved toward the skiffs with shocking eagerness, elbowing and shoving.

Four men were knocked down, but did not attempt to rise.

They crept down the muddy slope toward the waiting boats.

The Union soldiers grounded arms and settled into healthy, indifferent postures to watch the feeble boarding of the skiffs.

The crawling men tried to rise and fell again.

No one moved to them.

Watson watched two of them flounder into the shallow water and listened to their voices beg shrilly.

In a confused, soaked and stumbling shift of bodies and lifting arms, the two men were dragged into the same skiff.

The third crawling man forced himself erect.

He swayed like a drunkard, his arms milling in slow circles.

He paced forward unsteadily, leaning too far back, his head tilted oddly.

His steps were short and stiff, and, with his head thrown back, his progress was a supercilious strut.

He appeared to be peering haughtily down his nose at the crowded and unclean vessel that would carry him to freedom.

He stalked into the water and fell heavily over the side of the flat-bottomed barge, his weight nearly swamping the craft.

Watson looked for the fourth man.

He had reached the three passive guards ; ;

he crept in an incertain manner, patting the ground before him.

The guards did not look at him.

The figure on the earth halted, seemingly bewildered.

He sank back on his thin haunches like a weary hound.